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IRAN: MEK/NCRI – when AI impersonated a real activist in live conversations For years, synthetic media has largely meant fabricated images, cloned voices and manipulated video. A case uncovered by Anthropic in September 2026 suggests a more consequential development: artificial intelligence being used not merely to imitate how a person looks or sounds, but to behave as that person in an ongoing conversation. Anthropic says it dismantled a distributed influence operation targeting Iranians inside the country and abroad that it linked to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or PMOI/MEK, and its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The operators used a shared AI-agent platform to support impersonation, audience profiling, coordinated social-media activity, synthetic personas and the laundering of organisational content through apparently independent accounts. At least four people involved in the operation worked for official NCRI media outlets, according to Anthropic. The company also found references to committee approval processes and MEK leadership, but said it could not independently determine the precise level of central control. Cloning a person from 8,400 Telegram posts The most striking part of the operation involved a real activist whose Telegram identity was copied. According to Anthropic, the operators instructed Claude in Persian that it was now that person, then provided approximately 8,400 of the activist’s Telegram posts so the system could learn and reproduce his writing style. The AI-assisted account was subsequently used to conduct live political conversations with the activist’s existing contacts. Anthropic says that, to its knowledge, the people receiving those messages did not know they were interacting with an account being operated with AI assistance. This is materially different from a conventional chatbot or a static deepfake. The system was not simply producing a forged statement attributed to someone else. It was using a large archive of that person’s authentic language as behavioural training material, then applying the resulting imitation interactively. In practical terms, the deception moved from synthetic content to synthetic identity. Anthropic did not publish the identity of the impersonated activist, nor details of his contacts, and the public report does not establish what specific information the conversations produced. What it does establish is that the impersonation was operational rather than experimental: the cloned account was used in real exchanges with real people. From social-media monitoring to psychographic dossiers The impersonation sat inside a much broader targeting system. Anthropic says the network scraped more than 500 social-media channels and categorised individuals by location, age, profession, political orientation and arrest history. It then analysed approximately 51,944 archived messages from conversations to construct detailed psychographic dossiers on dozens of people inside Iran. The system was therefore not limited to broadcasting propaganda. It was also designed to understand specific audiences and individuals. Profiles could be used to decide what kind of message was most likely to resonate with a particular person, which political identity they appeared closest to and how they should be approached. Anthropic describes this as a structured targeting funnel rather than ad hoc social-media activity. That distinction is important in the Iranian context. Political activists, dissidents and opposition contacts inside Iran can face arrest and severe punishment. The report does not show that the dossiers directly led to arrests or other harm, but collecting and organising information such as arrest history and political affiliation adds a surveillance dimension to what would otherwise be described as an influence operation. A shared AI system for an influence network Anthropic found that the actors used a shared Claude-based platform named “Viktor”, with separate workspaces and persistent memory. Those memory files contained approved sources, prohibited words, account-management instructions and methods intended to reduce the risk of detection. One operator loaded MEK founding doctrine into the system as what the report called “strategic base data”, allowing others to reuse it across their work. This persistent-memory structure meant the AI did not have to be briefed from scratch for every task. Once doctrine, stylistic rules and operational constraints had been stored, the system could repeatedly produce material consistent with the network’s objectives. Anthropic says the same general playbook appeared across different workspaces despite the operators not sharing obvious account infrastructure. The network also used automated pipelines to coordinate Instagram posting schedules and tailor messages to different audiences. Some accounts initially avoided mentioning the Mojahedin at all, allowing material aligned with MEK/NCRI narratives to appear as neutral or independent political commentary. Content was distributed through the organisation’s own media ecosystem as well as accounts presented as ordinary news or activist profiles. Anthropic assessed the campaign as Category Two on its Breakout Scale: active on multiple platforms with distribution through NCRI-linked media properties and amplifier accounts, but without evidence of broad authentic penetration. Synthetic citizens and disguised organisational media The same infrastructure generated AI avatars presented as ordinary Iranians, complete with Persian audio, to promote Maryam Rajavi’s political programme. Anthropic says the synthetic nature of these personas was intentionally concealed. Operators also rewrote and redistributed content originating from MEK-affiliated media while stripping identifying features or presenting it through apparently independent accounts. The network’s political messaging targeted the Iranian government but also rival opposition currents, including monarchists and supporters of the Pahlavi camp. Anthropic documented fabricated video material attacking a member of the Pahlavi family and the use of the slogan “Neither Shah Nor Sheikh”, consistent with the NCRI’s broader competition with other opposition movements. That rivalry provides relevant context. Reuters describes the MEK as one of Iran’s principal organised opposition movements in exile and the dominant force behind the NCRI, led by Maryam Rajavi. Its relationship with other opposition currents is often contentious, while the extent of its support inside Iran remains uncertain. What can be attributed – and what cannot Anthropic’s attribution is unusually specific but still needs to be stated carefully. The company says its investigation linked the operation to MEK/NCRI and established that at least four participants worked for official NCRI media organisations. It also found a common operational playbook, committee review structures and repeated references to MEK leadership. On that basis, Anthropic said central tasking was likely. It nevertheless stopped short of saying it had proven that NCRI’s senior leadership directly ordered or managed every component of the operation. That caveat matters. The strongest public evidence supports describing GTG-84006 as a MEK/NCRI-aligned influence operation involving personnel from official NCRI media, rather than asserting that every action was directly commanded by the organisation’s top leadership. The broader significance of the case lies elsewhere. Earlier generations of synthetic media attempted to fabricate evidence: a photograph, a voice recording or a video. Here, AI was used to maintain an identity over time, remember doctrine, analyse targets and speak directly to real people while appearing to be someone they already trusted. The deepfake was no longer merely an artefact. It had become a participant in the conversation. Sources Anthropic — Countering misuse of AI: September 2026 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 AI Misuse Case Library — GTG-84006 activist impersonation case https://www.misuseofai.com/en/cases/gtg-84006-activist-impersonation/ Reuters — Who makes up Iran’s fragmented opposition? https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/who-makes-up-irans-fragmented-opposition-2025-06-18/ Reuters — Iran’s divided opposition senses its moment https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-divided-opposition-senses-its-moment-activists-remain-wary-protests-2025-06-19/ Reuters — NCRI and Maryam Rajavi https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dissident-leader-abroad-urges-iranians-bring-down-khamenei-2025-06-24/ Keywords #DISINFORMED #Episode12 #Iran #MEK #PMOI #NCRI #IranianOpposition #Disinformation #InfluenceOperations #InformationWarfare #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ClaudeAI #Anthropic #AIDeception #AIImpersonation #IdentityImpersonation #SyntheticIdentity #InteractiveDeepfake #DigitalImpersonation #PersonaCloning #BehaviouralCloning #Telegram #PsychographicProfiling #TargetProfiling #AudienceTargeting #SocialMediaManipulation #Astroturfing #SyntheticPersonas #NarrativeLaundering #CoordinatedInfluence #PoliticalInfluence #DigitalInfluence #OppositionPolitics #IranPolitics #OSINT #WRLD

Iran’s cognitive warfare – when AI becomes the operating layer of state propaganda Iranian state-linked influence operators were not using artificial intelligence simply to write faster social-media posts. According to Anthropic’s September 2026 threat intelligence report, three separate operations connected to Iranian propaganda institutions were using Claude to help construct the machinery behind what the operators themselves called “soft war” and “cognitive warfare” – non-military efforts intended to shape public opinion inside Iran and abroad. Anthropic linked the activity to the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization (ICCO), which operates under Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; the Islamic Propaganda Office of Khorasan Razavi; and the Bina Cultural Observatory, part of the Islamic Propaganda Organization. The company said each operation was run by someone working within or on behalf of the named institution. The attribution was based on a combination of account telemetry, institutional references disclosed during conversations, branded documents and open-source corroboration. Anthropic subsequently removed the accounts. AI as an operational headquarters The most significant feature of the operation was the role assigned to AI. Claude was used to develop campaign plans, doctrine manuals, coded project portfolios, persona systems, target databases, early-warning protocols, amplification schedules and ministerial planning documents. Anthropic described the model as the principal administrative and operational layer supporting the three campaigns, allowing relatively small groups of operators to create organisational structures and planning material that would otherwise have required a much larger staff. This distinction matters. The reported use of AI went considerably beyond content generation. Operators were using the model to help organise how influence activity should function: which audiences to target, which identities should deliver particular narratives, how official material should be repackaged and when amplification should take place. Human operators still determined objectives and supplied the underlying political doctrine; AI helped translate those decisions into an operational system. Anthropic found that all three operations explicitly connected their activity to Jihad al-Tabyin, often translated as “explanatory jihad”, a concept used within the Iranian state system to frame information activity as both a strategic and ideological responsibility. In internal planning material examined by the company, this doctrine was not merely rhetorical: it informed manuals and campaign structures used by the operators. ‘Not the narrator, but the director’ One sentence contained in the ICCO material captures the model particularly clearly. According to Anthropic, an operator described the role of Iranian cultural attachés as being “not to be the narrator, but the director” of the narrative. The distinction reveals the logic of attribution laundering. Instead of publishing an overt state message and asking foreign audiences to believe it, the operator attempts to create the appearance that the same narrative emerged independently from journalists, activists, foreign writers or ordinary citizens. Anthropic found that Claude was used specifically to make content appear to come from foreign authors or independent media organisations and to design hashtag campaigns that looked grassroots rather than centrally organised. The ICCO operation reportedly used the organisation’s international cultural network as part of this structure. Anthropic found ministerial-level documents carrying official ICCO branding, including a nine-part international influence portfolio. This makes the operation particularly significant because the infrastructure was not limited to anonymous social-media accounts; it intersected with formal state institutions and an existing network of cultural representation abroad. A multilingual content factory A second operation was associated with the Islamic Propaganda Office of Khorasan Razavi and what Anthropic described as a “cognitive warfare command room” operating from a seminary in Mashhad. Its organisers ran a multi-province content production system known internally as Manjanegh, or “Catapult”. According to Anthropic, dozens of activists were involved in repackaging publicly available reporting from Iranian security institutions under different personas so that the material no longer appeared directly connected to those institutions. The network used Claude to transform official government intelligence bulletins into customised material in Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Malay, Spanish and English, while planning expansion into a total of 20 languages. Distribution extended across Iranian platforms such as Eitaa, Bale and Rubika and international services including X, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and YouTube. Anthropic also documented paid amplification across more than 100 Iranian channels, including channels associated with IRGC narratives. The scale should nevertheless be interpreted carefully. Anthropic documented production infrastructure and some real-world dissemination, but it did not demonstrate that all planned campaigns were fully deployed or that they meaningfully changed public opinion. The company placed the operation in Category Three of its Breakout Scale, indicating multi-platform activity with content observed in external distribution channels, rather than evidence of strategic impact on entire populations. From security bulletins to apparently independent voices The Bina Cultural Observatory operation provides another example of the same architecture. Anthropic linked a director-level official at Bina to activity in which Claude generated messaging in the voice of an IRGC spokesperson. During the 2026 US–Israel–Iran war, the network also attributed false claims to Western institutions including CSIS, Brookings and RAND. The apparent objective was to make Iranian state-aligned claims look as though they had been independently validated by respected foreign research organisations. That technique is more sophisticated than simply publishing propaganda under a false name. It attempts to manufacture a chain of external validation: official information is transformed into apparently independent commentary, which can then be recirculated as evidence that outside observers have reached the same conclusion. Anthropic also found target databases naming international officials and Iranian opposition figures, as well as aggressive counter-narrative material directed against the Bahá’í community. These findings show that the infrastructure was designed not only for broad messaging but also for targeted influence activity against specific groups and individuals. What AI changed The Iranian operations described by Anthropic did not create a new doctrine of influence. Iran has used cultural institutions, official media, aligned organisations and covert or semi-covert online networks for years. What AI changed was the economics and organisational capacity of that model. A relatively small team could use the system to draft doctrine, create personas, translate material, structure target databases, produce campaign calendars and generate multiple versions of the same message for different audiences. The operator remained responsible for intent, political direction and selection of targets. AI reduced the amount of human labour required to turn those decisions into a functioning influence operation. The most revealing part of the case is therefore not that an Iranian propaganda network used a chatbot. It is that AI was being treated as part of the back office of information warfare – a system for converting state doctrine into apparently decentralised, multilingual and plausibly independent voices. Sources Anthropic — Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 Iran International — Iran state-aligned accounts used Claude to push IRGC narratives https://www.iranintl.com/en/202609105561 BNE IntelliNews — Yemen missile cell used AI to write guidance software, Anthropic says https://new.intellinews.com/articles/yemen-missile-cell-used-ai-to-write-guidance-software-anthropic-says-467296 This is Beirut — Anthropic report details Iranian propaganda operations https://thisisbeirut.com.lb/news/politics/anthropic-report-details-iranian-propaganda-operations-and-yemen-missile-development-using-claude Anthropic report — PDF mirror https://static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.com/content/uploads/2026/09/anthropic-detecting-and-countering-091026-1.pdf Keywords #DISINFORMED #Episode11 #Iran #IranianInfluence #IranianPropaganda #CognitiveWarfare #SoftWar #JihadAlTabyin #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIPropaganda #GenerativeAI #ClaudeAI #Anthropic #SyntheticMedia #NarrativeManipulation #NarrativeLaundering #AttributionLaundering #PersonaNetworks #Astroturfing #SocialMediaManipulation #DigitalInfluence #StatePropaganda #IslamicCultureAndCommunicationsOrganization #ICCO #IslamicPropagandaOrganization #KhorasanRazavi #IRGC #MultilingualInfluence #Targeting #Amplification #OSINT #WRLD

A Momentous Milestone in International Commentary! SOURCE: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/luciano-magaldi-s-05a4a71b3_the-meloni-doctrine-italys-transatlantic-share-7336809181242441728-F2Qf/ Extending in advance my deepest appreciation to: 1) Mr David Freddoso, "The Hill" Deputy Opinion Editor. 2) Mr Chuck Jordan, "The Hill" Opinion Editor. I am delighted to share a particularly significant achievement in my journalistic endeavours: the publication of my inaugural opinion piece in "The Hill", one of the U.S. Top 10 most influencial political news sources, and America's 2018 second-most influential news publication after CNN and the third-most cited source for US political discourse on social media. 📰 "The Meloni Doctrine: Italy's 'transatlantic pivot' is reshaping European diplomacy" by Dr. Luciano Magaldi Sardella, Opinion Contributor Published on 4th June 2025: --> https://lnkd.in/dMX7t9D7 Having one's analysis featured on such a distinguished platform represents the culmination of years dedicated to studying transatlantic relations and European diplomatic strategy. The opportunity to present Italy's evolving geopolitical positioning to The Hill's substantial American readership has been both an honour and a profound responsibility. This publication marks not merely a personal milestone, but rather the beginning of what I hope shall be an ongoing contribution to international policy discourse. I extend my sincere gratitude to The Hill's editorial team for their confidence in my work, and to my colleagues and connections who have supported this journey. I look forward to continuing this dialogue on the evolving dynamics of European-American relations and Italy's increasingly pivotal role therein. Link: https://lnkd.in/dMX7t9D7

Un'incredibile inchiesta del giornalista israeliano Ronen Bergman mostra come Israele inventi e falsifichi dichiarazioni di funzionari iraniani per fabbricare "prove" che l'Iran stia costruendo armi nucleari. L'episodio risale al 5 agosto, quando fu riportato a livello mondiale che Ahmad Vahidi, comandante del Corpo delle Guardie Rivoluzionarie Islamiche (IRGC), avrebbe ammesso che l'Iran stava sviluppando armi nucleari. L'unico problema? Non era VERO: 1) La rete tv preferita da Netanyahu in Israele, Channel 14, ha trascorso mesi a dipingere Vahidi come «l’uomo più potente dell’Iran», preparando il pubblico a considerare qualsiasi sua dichiarazione sensazionale come proveniente direttamente dal regime iraniano stesso. In realtà, egli è solo uno dei tanti personaggi influenti. 2) Un account indiano pubblica una citazione completamente inventata attribuita a Vahidi, secondo cui le armi nucleari sarebbero una «necessità» per l’Iran. 3) Lo stesso account pubblica una citazione in cui si afferma che Vahidi avrebbe dichiarato che l’Iran continuerà a sviluppare armi nucleari…Non ce n'era alcuna fonte. L’account “Mossad Commentary”, un account molto seguito che non ha alcun legame con il vero Mossad, ha pubblicato la citazione in inglese. 5) Channel 14, appena 33 minuti dopo, riporta la notizia e sostiene che questa sia “la prima volta” in cui un funzionario iraniano ammette direttamente di stare costruendo una bomba nucleare. Notizia pubblicata senza una fonte. 6) 3 minuti dopo, Yair Netanyahu, figlio del PM israeliano, ritwitta Mossad Commentary; tre minuti dopo ritwitta Channel 14 English, seguito da Israel War Room. 7) Due ore dopo, Netanyahu senior usa la citazione inventata e falsa in un discorso ufficiale: a quel punto, il tweet inventato è diventato politica dello Stato israeliano, basato su propaganda confezionata da falsi profili sui social. 8) Il tweet arriva negli Stati Uniti; l’ambasciatore statunitense presso l’ONU Mike Waltz lo condivide affermando che l’Iran sta «finalmente ammettendo ciò che era chiaro da anni», per poi cancellarlo senza fornire spiegazioni. 9) Mark Levine lo condivide e successivamente Fox News lo riporta come un fatto accertato, includendo un titolo in sovrimpressione. 10) Channel 14 riporta nuovamente la notizia citando come fonti la FOX news e Netanyahu. Mossad Commentary, la fonte originale della versione inglese, cita ora Channel 14 come propria fonte, completando così un circolo vizioso di citazioni false. 11) Il Ministero degli Esteri israeliano diffonde le dichiarazioni false di Netanyahu al pubblico di lingua persiana. 12) L’agenzia di stampa indiana ANI riporta la notizia in India, attribuendola ai “media israeliani”, rendendo così il giro completo. Si tratta di una macchina ben oliata di disinformazione che parte da Netanyahu e dalla sua cerchia, e condivisa da propagandisti occidentali, notizie inventate progettata per creare una falsa narrazione che distrugga i negoziati con l’Iran e per riaccenda la guerra. Frodi e propaganda simili sono state perpetrate in passato, come nel caso dello scandalo «Jewish Chronicle/Bild», quando un giornalista inventato inserì notizie sulla stampa per giustificare il fallimento di un accordo sugli ostaggi con Hamas, altre volte per giustificare l’uccisione di 300 giornalisti palestinesi e la distruzione di tutti gli ospedali a Gaza. Questa volta la propaganda israeliana sta trascinando il mondo intero in una guerra globale catastrofica che sta danneggiando l’economia mondiale e la sicurezza nazionale dell’Occidente democratico. #Israele #Iran #Disinformazione

1 sierpnia - nieobecny, 10 kwietnia - nieobecny, 11 listopada - nie ma go w Warszawie, a rocznica rzezi wołyńskiej odbywa się bez jego udziału. Kto to taki? Otóż Donald Tusk regularnie nie pojawia się na najważniejszych polskich świętach państwowych. Dlaczego premier decyduje się wzmagać najgorsze oskarżenia pod swoim adresem i cyklicznie nie stawia się na uroczystościach państwowych? O tym @wina_Mazurka w najnowszym odcinku commentary! #DonaldTusk #Polska #Święta

Donald Tusk: *oddycha* Stanowski: 140 tweetów, 24 programy na żywo, 13 commentary po 35 minut każdy PiS: *rozpada się* Stanowski: https://t.co/P0IsczMppI #DonaldTusk #PiS #Polska

@ActuFoot_ Téma la gueule édulcorée de nos chaînes nous mdrr, TF1 comme M6 pitoresque sur toute la ligne. Merci la Suisse et la Belgique pour nous avoir fait vivre un peu d'émotions et de courage au niveau commentary. Pas merci aux vendus du privé FR #Foot #Commentaire #Média

Rade Bogdanovic, a former Yugoslav football player, sparked outrage in Serbia after making a racist remark during a World Cup broadcast about black players losing concentration, leading to apologies from both him and the Serbian public broadcaster RTS, despite initially inviting him back for further commentary. #rasszizmus #futball #Szerbia

@TraYt0N Madame jaiditnon Pouvez-vous cast à la place de Jean, nous serions très ravis de vous entendre commenter les actions clownesques de KOI et du colossal G2 Monsieur Asu #Esports #Gaming #Commentary